Åke Edwardson - Never End

At four apartments there was no answer.

"Hmm," said Bergenhem.

"The housing association that owns the apartments," Winter said.

"We've already talked to them."

"Check again."

They went back. Winter could see the sweat on Bergenhem's back through his shirt. They passed the tallest of the buildings.

"This is where Mattias lives," said Bergenhem. "Jeanette Bielke's exboyfriend."

"Hmm."

"That building."

"I know."

"Have you been to his place?"

"Not yet."

Winter's mobile rang.

"It wasn't consummated rape," said the male doctor who was standing in for Pia Froberg. "Anne Nöjd."

"I see," Winter said.

"Have you heard from the coroner's office?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid."

There was a short pause. Winter could hear paper rustling.

"A belt or some other thin… object," said the pathologist.

"Such as a dog leash? Could she have been strangled with a dog leash?"

"Yes. That's one possibility."

"Can you be more precise?"

"Not just yet."

They were by the sea at six-twenty. Some Swedes were on their way home to their barbecues. The new Swedes were carrying their barbecues down to the shore.

"We'll bring a throwaway grill with us tomorrow," Angela said. "You can get them at gas stations." She was undressing Elsa. "I can't resist the wonderful smell of their grub any longer." She was watching two women dressed in black who were starting to cook dinner on the beach.

"I'm all for that," said Winter, lifting up Elsa, who screamed and giggled as he swung her up and down and carried her down to the water's edge, which was receding as dusk approached.

Elsa was sitting on his shoulders when they waded in. He squatted down and let her feel the lukewarm water. There were too many jellyfish, but the water was ideal. He lifted Elsa up, held her around her hips, and spun around and around. Light dazzled. The horizon disappeared. He stopped, feeling how dizzy he was. When it eased he realized that there was something nagging in his mind. He searched for what it was as Elsa wriggled in his arms.

It was something he'd heard and seen, just as bright and dazzling as when he'd been spinning around. One second, two. He'd seen it. Seen it.

He heard voices and looked down. Two teenaged girls were asking if they could hold Elsa.

"Ask her," he said.

She said they could.

Everything was darker as they drove home. He picked Elsa up-she was in too deep a slumber to awaken.

Angela served white wine. They sat in the kitchen, listening to the evening.

"You need a vacation," she said.

"Two weeks to go."

"Can you really go on leave if you haven't solved this case? Cases."

"Yes."

"Really?"

"It could be just as well. For the sake of the investigation."

"I don't believe that for a minute."

"Would you believe it, gone already." He gazed at his empty glass.

"I'll get the bottle."

She filled him up, and he took another sip.

"A penny for your thoughts, Erik."

"Right now?"

"When else?"

"What a marvelous evening it is."

"One in a thousand." She looked at him. "You were thinking about something else, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"You didn't look pleased."

He took another sip, and put down his glass.

"I was thinking about the murders, of course. The girls." He turned to face her.

"You can't just turn off. Can you?"

"No. I don't think so. They're wrong, the ones who say that you can," he said. "OK, you can turn it off for a while, do something else. But then it comes back."

She nodded.

"Tonight two teenage girls wanted to hold Elsa. That's when it came back. Lots of images."

"You looked unusually far away when you came out of the water."

"Something hit me."

"May I ask what?"

"I can't quite put my finger on it. It hit me that I knew something… new. I think. Something important."

Winter called Halders. He'd just gotten upand was sitting on the balcony. Invisible birds were singing from a sky where two jets had painted a cross.

"I'll see what I can do," Halders said.

"How are things?"

"It's hot already."

"How's it going?"

"I said I'll see what I can do, didn't I?"

"OK, OK."

Halders looked up and saw a new cross. The old one had already melted into the sky.

"As you can hear, there's still a bit of the grumpy old Halders left," he said.

"There's hope yet, then."

"I'll be coming in shortly," Halders said.

"We'll try to find the flat where one missing boy lives in the meantime."

"You'll have to do that, at least." Halders paused. "I'll pay a visit there later."

He took the road alongside the river. The white pleasure boats twinkled on the water like sparklers. The asphalt felt soft under the tires. It smelled like a different country. Julie Miller was singing "Out in the Rain" on Halders's CD player. Halders turned up the volume and sang his way through his journey westward as the sun punched at the roof of his car.

As he turned off the roundabout the silencer on his exhaust suddenly gave way. People turned their heads to stare at him.

The high-rise buildings in Frolunda swayed like drunks in the thin air. He parked outside one of them, diagonally opposite McDonald's.

The elevator didn't work. He took the stairs up to the sixth floor. There was graffiti all over the walls, letters on cracked concrete. Stains everywhere, like black blood. A smell of piss and cooking had solidified in the stairwell between floors. Children screamed through closed doors, grownups shouted in a thousand different languages. He passed a man in a turban, a woman behind a veil, a man in a vest who passed by hugging the wall. He could see the madness in the man's eyes.

A door opened on the fifth floor and a young woman emerged with a double stroller containing two small children, who looked up at him in silence. The woman pressed the elevator button. "It's not working," Halders said. She pressed again. "I have to go and buy food," she said.

Halders went up one more floor and rang the bell. Mattias answered after the third ring.

"I wasn't posh enough for them," he said, when they were on the sofa under a big window.

Halders nodded.

"Can you understand that?"

"I've even been through it myself."

"You mean it's happened to you, too?"

Halders nodded again. He could see the sky and a reproduction of a painting of a field full of sunflowers next to the window. "You were there yesterday, weren't you?" he said. "Or outside the house, at least."

"Who told you that?"

Halders didn't answer.

"That bastard of an old man, wasn't it?"

Halders shrugged.

"Jeanette hasn't said anything, has she?"

"Why don't you let her go, Mattias?"

"What do you mean, let her go?"

"You know full well what I mean."

"I did that ages ago. Let… everything go."

"Really?"

"Then you guys come nosing around all the time."

"That's because something else has happened."

"Yes, I read about it. But I don't under-"

He stopped when Halders held the picture of the boy in front of his nose. It was an enlargement of the graduation party photo.

"Do you recognize him?" Halders asked.

"No," said Matthias after a short pause. "Who is he?"

"You mean you haven't read about it?"

"No. Read? Read what?"

"This is a witness we'd like to get in touch with, but he's disappeared."

"You don't say."

"We've been told that he lives here."

"Here?" said Mattias, looking around as if expecting to see the boy enter the room.

"In this area."